Three days later, just as Tatsuma finished his lunch and tidied up his kitchen, the window by his bed suddenly burst open. A figure scrambled into the room, only to catch his foot on a small bedside rug and tumble ungracefully onto the neatly made bed.
"Who's there?!"
Tatsuma, who had been tying off a trash bag, whipped around. He found a white-haired man clutching his face in a transparent attempt to hide his identity. Tatsuma's lip twitched at the sheer absurdity of the sight.
Face-down on Tatsuma's bed, Jiraiya felt like he was about to cry at his own stupidity. He had been a shinobi for years and had completed countless infiltration missions, yet he'd managed to slip up in a child's bedroom.
"He can't see me, he can't see me, he can't see me..." Jiraiya muttered under his breath, as if praying for invisibility.
Tatsuma rolled his eyes but decided to be a team player. "Who could it be? To think someone actually broke into my room! Come out, whoever you are!"
Jiraiya paused, momentarily stunned by the boy's cooperation. There was no way Tatsuma hadn't seen a grown man faceplant onto his bed. The only explanation was... He's trying to save my dignity!
Deeply moved by this realization, Jiraiya scrambled off the bed. With a swift Body Flicker, he appeared perched on the windowsill with one leg crossed over the other, striking a heroic pose.
"Kid! I didn't expect you to notice me so quickly. Truly impressive vigilance!"
"Lord Jiraiya?!" Tatsuma feigned "shock," letting the trash bag drop to the floor with a dull thud. Fortunately, the bag was sturdy and well-knotted, so the contents didn't spill.
A few black lines appeared on Jiraiya's forehead as he stared at Tatsuma's overly dramatic acting. "Alright, kid. That performance wouldn't even get you a background extra role. You're a long way off from being a ninja."
He hopped down and looked around. The apartment was standard for a war orphan: an open-plan layout combining the living room, dining area, kitchen, and bedroom, plus a small, cramped study.
The place wasn't cluttered; everything was in its proper place. Aside from the bed Jiraiya had just mussed up, the room was so tidy it could have been a model home.
"Kid, I didn't expect your place to be this clean. It's... not what I imagined."
"Not what you imagined? You mean compared to your place?"
Tatsuma picked up the trash bag and shrugged. Jiraiya's face darkened. He was indeed a bit... "free-spirited" when it came to domestic chores. The memory of Tatsuma's first words upon waking up three days ago—complaining about the smell—made his annoyance flare up again.
After this next mission, I'm definitely hiring a cleaner to do a deep scrub, Jiraiya thought. He let out a boisterous laugh to cover his embarrassment. "Ahahaha! Everyone has their own lifestyle! I'm just too busy to stay on top of the housework."
Tatsuma offered a noncommittal hum. In his view, tidying up daily was the most efficient way to live. Ten or twenty minutes a day kept the chaos at bay. If you let it pile up, it would take hours and become a grueling chore, which usually led to people just giving up and living in filth.
Still, he wasn't about to lecture a Sannin on his lifestyle. Besides, Jiraiya's excuse of being "too busy" was actually valid. If anyone else said it, it might sound like a cop-out, but not him.
In the future, Jiraiya would be known as a "model worker" of the shinobi world, completing more missions than almost anyone else in history—all while spending over a decade away from the village on "research." If a man with that track record said he was busy, you believed him.
"Lord Jiraiya, what brings you here today?" Tatsuma asked, moving the conversation along.
Jiraiya nodded and stepped off the windowsill. He carefully walked around the bed and peeked into the training room. His face immediately fell into a look of disappointment.
Tatsuma's training room was also spotless. There was a dedicated area for ninja tools, each kunai and shuriken wiped clean and organized. Aside from some Academy textbooks, there was nothing else—no secret scrolls, no private libraries. Tatsuma simply couldn't afford them.
Seeing this, Jiraiya untied two scrolls from his flak jacket. "These are the ninjutsu scrolls I promised you and Minato. I only have one copy of each, so you'll have to share. One of you takes one, transcribe it, and then swap. I'm heading out on a mission shortly, so I don't have time to walk you through them again. Work it out with Minato; the early fundamentals for both are mostly the same anyway."
"When will you be back? I can give them back to you once we're done copying them," Tatsuma said, stepping forward to take the scrolls.
Jiraiya scratched his head. "I don't know. In this line of work... there's always a chance I might not come back at all."
"Please don't say things like that. For a shinobi as powerful as you, what mission could possibly stand in your way?"
Tatsuma's tone was profoundly sincere. It wasn't just because he knew the plot; it was because after six months of using his "System," he had trained himself to be genuinely earnest whenever he praised someone.
He truly did want Jiraiya to stay safe. Jiraiya laughed and ruffled Tatsuma's hair, turning the natural perm into a literal bird's nest.
"I'll take that as a good omen. Study hard. Whenever I have a break and come back to the village, I'll be testing you and Minato. Don't you dare go slacking off while you have my personal scrolls!"
"I understand, Lord Jiraiya. I'll pour everything into learning them."
Tatsuma nodded firmly. Ninjutsu and Genjutsu were his biggest weaknesses. He hadn't had the resources to train them before, but now that Jiraiya had been generous enough to hand him two scrolls, he wasn't about to waste the opportunity.
Jiraiya looked out the window. "Time's up. I've gotta move."
"Please... just use the door," Tatsuma sighed as Jiraiya turned back toward the window.
Jiraiya waved him off. "What kind of ninja uses a door?"
With that, he leaped out. A few jumps later, he had vanished from sight. Tatsuma sighed, closed the window, and straightened his bedsheets. He grabbed the scrolls and his trash bag and headed downstairs.
After dropping off the trash, he made a beeline for Minato's house.
Thud, thud, thud!
"Minato! You aren't taking a nap, are you?"
Hearing Tatsuma's usual loud inquiry, Minato—who was indeed awake—opened the door with a smile.
"Come on in."